


Runaway

by ThymeAtlas



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Gen, Trans Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 01:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7131983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThymeAtlas/pseuds/ThymeAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second time Fletcher Renn teleported was two weeks after his mother's funeral during an argument with his dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaway

**Author's Note:**

> wow i love fletcher renn & i also love projecting onto him  
> warning for some transphobia from his dad

The first time Fletcher Renn teleported was after his mother’s funeral. It was winter and the nylons were cold and scratchy against his legs, black sweater not providing enough warmth. He hated that all the adults there saw him as a girl and he hated that all of his friends there were probably considering it too with the way every single person was talking about his mom’s “daughter.” He avoided his father after the service, didn’t want to fight, not now, and he hid out behind the main building, poking at the frozen ground with a stick. Eventually he saw people filing out, and he watched them climb into their cars without moving. His heart was beating fast and he didn’t know why. His father was in the middle of the crowd and from here he looked like nothing special, just another person in the middle of a crowd. When all the cars were gone, Fletcher ran in a different direction, wanting to be home and knowing that the house that he lived in wasn’t that anymore. He didn’t register it when he appeared in his own room and he ran into the wall, knocking a poster to the floor. His dad wasn’t home yet and his shoes were dirty and he was cold.

“What the fuck,” he said out loud. He didn’t know what had happened and his heart was still beating fast but he was still cold.

Shoes lying on the floor, nylons peeled off, sweater discarded, dress shoved messily into his closet, Fletcher Renn sat on his bed wrapped in a comforter and thought.

The second time he teleported was less than a week later. He had been trying, on and off, for the last few days, running and concentrating hard on a specific place. He had the week off from school because his mom was dead and he didn’t want to be anywhere near his house with his dad like he was, so Fletcher mostly walked from place to place around town, going to a café with his computer or to a friend’s house or to the arcade. When the street was empty or he was cutting across an alley or a neighbor’s yard, he would run and close his eyes, but it never worked.

Fletcher and his dad were fighting because a friend had asked for “Fletcher” on the home line. Fletcher hadn’t been checking his phone for the past few days because he couldn’t deal with the condolences flooding his voicemail, and the friend was probably just worried about him, but at this point it didn’t matter.

He had heard the same arguments enough that at this point he just tuned it out, as his dad ranted about how he was allying himself with a dangerous group of people and how presenting the way he wanted to was provocative and distracting and confusing and disturbing to others and how so many people committed suicide after transitioning and how nobody loved Fletcher as much as his dad did for being able to tell him these things.

He was crying at this point, but he had given up on fighting back, and all that he could think was how he wanted to be somewhere else, somewhere far away, and he shut his eyes for half a second. When he opened them he was sitting on a bench at the park his mom had taken him to when he was much younger. He smiled, wiped his face, concentrated really hard, and he was across the field.

He couldn’t go very far, he realized, and it was much easier going somewhere he could see or that he had a strong emotional connection to, but as he practiced more and more he was able to go to more and more places.

He only went back home in the middle of the night to pack a duffel and his computer. He never saw his dad again.

For the next few months, things were amazing. He teleported into shops after hours to steal clothes; he cut his hair himself, realized it was terrible, and got it done at a barber’s; he bought a binder online and got called “sir” in a diner for the first time in his life; he crashed in five star hotels and ordered room service and watched badly dubbed anime. He knew on some level that he was living in a bubble, but he didn’t want to address the fact that he had left home, dropped out of school, cut off contact with all of his friends. He had ditched his phone on the third day when he realized his dad could probably figure out some way to track him with it, and he hadn’t opened his email in ages. Unable to bring himself to reach out and make the whole thing real, Fletcher floated.

He ran into Cameron Light completely by accident. He’d wanted to get into a theme park without buying tickets. Light had just happened to be on vacation and had noticed the kid appearing out of nowhere and had recognized him as another teleporter instead of brushing it off. He had then talked at Fletcher for a solid hour.

If he was being perfectly honest with himself, he was crushed that he wasn’t the only person in the world with teleportation powers. Or any magic at all really. For a while he’d thought he was special. Mostly, though, he was annoyed at having to listen to a lecture. Not like he’d paid attention. He nodded along, watching people walk around them, and went over a mental list of what he wanted to do in Ireland and how much money he’d have to steal to do them.

He hadn’t seen Light after that, and while he was later sad to learn that the guy died, and even felt kind of guilty about it, he rationalized it as: Light had followed the rules, and he had wanted to make Fletcher follow the rules, too. He was predictable. It made sense that he could be killed, and therefor made sense that Fletcher probably wouldn’t be.

He didn’t know any of that when Skulduggery and Valkyrie crashed through the door of his hotel room halfway through an episode of Naruto. He just saw a tall, skinny man and a tall, dark-haired girl that were being pretty rude to him and that wanted him to do things.

But the thing was, he was getting bored. He had been drifting from place to place and while it was great to be away from everything, and even better to have enough money to do whatever he wanted, he felt kind of lost without some sort of structure, even if he also hated it.

So when they said that he’d probably die, when they swooped him into this big adventure, he kind of wanted to go with them. He figured he could always ditch and teleport away, it wasn’t like anyone would be able to catch him now that he was aware of what was going on. He thought, _Why not_ , and followed them.


End file.
